Exactly 2 months till the bar & Interesting Comment

I don’t have too much to write about, other than I am doing 25-30 practice questions every day, reviewing my Strategies and Tactics book daily, as well as making and reviewing notecards daily too… My main focus is on property and evidence, big time… I feel pretty good, so not much too report… If I can keep up 25-30 questions per day, I will have done about 2000 practice questions come bar exam time… For each question, regardless if I got it right or wrong, I review the full answer to the question and make a note card if I don’t fully understand the answer…

Anyway, I received an interesting comment today (It’s a comment on the first post of this blog from an anonymous poster) which is published and I already responded to it but I wanted to make it a post as well, since most people probably don’t subscribe to the comments…

Here’s the comment from the anonymous poster:

“Hi Folks- I too did not pass my first round of the bar. I missed the passing Virginia score by a mere THREE points. As you can imagine, it was heartwrenching. The good news though is that I got a high enough score to not have to take the MBE again for DC. Im debating at this point whether or not to take the VA bar since I will most likely not need that state’s particular license. Ahhh…decisions decisions. However, at this point I think I’ll be taking DC.

So I read above that the MPT section is known as the “gimme.” Thats wonderful news. Where did you guys here that? Is there any way to prepare for that? Also, do you all know where we can get the barbri essay books for dc? I dont think barbri sells them individually do they?

Good luck my friends…i feel your pain!”

And here’s my response:

To Anonymous:

1a) Sorry to hear you did not pass on your first attempt. As for taking the DC bar instead of VA, it’s up to you… If the MBE is your strong section, I’d recommend taking the ENTIRE DC bar, not just the essays, since DC averages the score of the MBE and Essays (each is weighted 50%)… So, if you do good on the MBE, you can do poorly on the essays and still pass (even just doing better on the MBE by 1 point above average can make the difference betweeen passing and failing the whole thing)… Virginia is the same way, except they weigh the essays more heavily, and they don’t have an MPT (60% essay / 40% MBE). Remember, the essays on the DC bar are only 25% of your total score, as the MPT is the other 25%. So if you can do great on the MBE and MPT, then 75% of your score is good to go!

1b) Also, I thought you had to PASS another state’s bar exam to use your MBE score on the DC bar exam? (i.e. – I didn’t think you could NOT pass the VA bar, but still use your MBE score in DC)

1c) Have you not registered yet for the DC bar? The late deadline is Dec 31, so you better hurry! :-)

2) As far as the MPT goes, I wouldn’t say it’s a “gimmie”, but it’s probably the “easiest” since you don’t need to memorize any law for it… Barbri has an MPT book, and there are a few other books out there on studying for it. Look at my list of materials I am using, I have the Rigos and micromash books for the MPT, as well as the newly released 2008 MPT questions.

3) There are no “DC Essay books” per se, since DC uses the MEE. All you need is any MEE book, such as barbri or Rigos. I’d also get the 2007 and 2008 actual MEE’s from the NCBE.

4) Barbri DOES sell the books individually. Just call their office and they will give you the prices. However, I recommend ebay or craigslist to get the books used unless you have the extra cash to buy them brand new from barbri, but you’ll save hundreds of dollars getting them used, and most of the time the used books are in like-new condition. All of the used books I bought had, literally, zero markings in them. They were for all effective purposes, brand new. And I saved thousands of dollars (but I bought tons of materials)…